Union Minister Piyush Goyal interacts with dignitaries at the Global Economic Cooperation Summit in Mumbai. File
| Photo Credit: ANI
The heads of various Maharashtra government development corporations on Thursday (February 19, 2026) made a strong pitch for Maharashtra’s ongoing infrastructural development, adding that new projects being developed would go a long way in propelling the State’s economy to reach $1 trillion in size by 2030.
Speaking at the Global Economic Cooperation 2026 summit organised by the Future Economic Cooperation Council, top officials from the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC), City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO), Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC), and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) each spoke about their vision of Maharashtra’s future.
“Maharashtra contributes almost 15% of exports, 15% of industrial output, 31% of FDI, and almost 70% of the data centre capacity of the country,” Vijay Singhal, managing director and vice-chairman of CIDCO said. “We are moving towards a $1 trillion economy by 2030.”
He added that the new Navi Mumbai International Airport, owned by CIDCO, would go a long way in attaining this goal, especially due to the new additions being made to the airport.
“Yesterday, the Chief Minister inaugurated the FedEx cargo hub which has a ₹25,000 crore investment,” Mr. Singhal said. “We are also bringing DHL. We are starting international operations by the end of March. The airport will have two runways and four terminals with a capacity of 90 million passengers per year, making it the size of London’s airport.”
Moving away from airports, Anilkumar Gaikwad, the vice-chairman and managing director of MSRDC pointed out that the completion of the country’s longest expressway — the 701 km long Hindu Hrudaysamrat Balasaheb Thackeray Maharashtra Samruddhi Mahamarg connecting Mumbai and Nagpur — would be followed by the development of the region this expressway runs through.
“Along the expressway, there is a plan to carry out the systematic development of the nodes,” Mr. Gaikwad said. “The expressway has 26 interchanges and for 15 interchanges, MRSDC will be the planning authority for the area. One interchange is about 8,000 hectares, which is the area that will be developed at each one.”
Shankar Deshpande, Chief Investment & Planning Officer at the MMRDA, said that the multimodal corridor connecting Alibaug to Virar would ensure that any travel across 100 kilometers takes less than an hour.
The bullet train project will also unlock the area, reaching from Bandra to Thane in 8 minutes,” he said. “As Maharashtra targets a $1 trillion economy, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region will itself become a $1 trillion economy, and our GDP per capita will rise from $4,000 to about $10,000. We are working on an ‘infrastructure stack’ — physical, digital, social, blue, and green — to attract global capital.”
(The reporter is at the GEC 2026 summit on the invitation of the Future Economic Cooperation Council.)
Published – February 19, 2026 04:50 pm IST
